More reading, and it seems that the clerks got it wrong. They had more eligible voters than they thought they did:

"It turned out that clerks had left Luis Fortuno, the resident commissioner of Puerto Rico, off their list. He is not allowed to vote on the House floor, but does have voting rights in the GOP's internal deliberations."

Dylan, for moderate left political news try www.washingtonmonthly.com or www.talkingpointsmemo.com. You should add some moderate right to your diet as well: I recommend www.andrewsullivan.com and www.balloon-juice.com. All these sites lean right or left but aren't afraid to slam their own "team" as neccessary.

February 02, 2006
TWO TRIVIAL NOTES FROM THE HOUSE LEADERSHIP ELECTION. The screw-up with the original balloting among the GOP conference this afternoon that has occasioned so many cracks apparently resulted from the clerks having forgotten that the delegate from Puerto Rico's vote counts in leadership elections. Nothing extremely shady, alas. Meanwhile, the jokes I've seen in the blogoshpere have been funny enough, but it seems like the most obvious one has gone oddly missing: When an aide first came out to tell the press that they had to redo the vote, several journalists simultaneously yelled out variations of "What, is Katherine Harris handling the ballots in there?"

Trivial point number two: The far less important leadership election held today was for policy chairman, which Adam Putnam of Florida clinched. Folks might recall Putnam from the infamous Howdy-Doody incident of 2005.

Another blog worth following as a centre-right source of info is http://www.intel-dump.com/. Several bloggers co-operate, one of whom (Philip Carter) regularly writes for Slate. The focus tends to be more national security than washington politics, but it's been providing a lot of really good coverage of the Bush Administration and the Iraq War.

I think it's interesting what this story and its followups indicate about the average citizen's confidence in the fidelity of our voting systems. We have so little faith that we're willing to believe every clerical error is a conspiracy.

The Democrats and questionable voting are linked just as commonly. Anyone who's lived in Chicago (and "voted" for Rostankowski and Daly, knowingly or otherwise) can testify to just how true that is. The security problems inherent in voting these days seem to be linked to the ever-increasing amount of power and wealth that are linked with being elected. The only real security solution to voting fraud in the US is constitutional reform -- a return to the political structures of the early history of America where getting elected didn't have the same profit potential as it has today.

This of course flies in the face of both parties' current political philosophy so don't hold your breath.

This reminds me of the "honourable" practice in the Italian parliament called "playing the piano". As the members of parliament have an electronic card to insert in front of their seat when voting, you can often see people stretching between desks to vote for their absent neighbours... the best ones can vote for up to 4 people at the same time.